


Once More With Feeling

by alyseofwonderland (Esyla)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arya doesnt kill the Night King, Blood Magic, Did i write sex or did I write bad poetry?, Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, F/M, First Time, Fix-It, Put magic back into the story, Rewrite the ending, Warging, Winterfell, battle tactics, sappy boys and baddass women, world building fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 03:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19265443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esyla/pseuds/alyseofwonderland
Summary: Gendry freezes. His eyes leave the charging dead in front of him and turn upwards. Arya is alone on her stretch of the battlements and the dead are swarming towards her. She swings with her staff, the one he made her, and it’s not enough. There are too many. Arya dodges and then actually leaps onto a connecting roof.His entire world crumbles in the second that Arya’s feet leave the solid stone and leap onto thatched covering. It’s less than a second, a fraction of a moment but it stretches out in his mind like an eternity compressed into a single second.He loves her. He loves her with everything that he is, with every breath, every heartbeat, and now an army of the dead stands between them.There’s a sound like a roar. It rips through the area. It shakes his bones. And only after Gendry has slammed his hammer through the dead that stand on the steps up to the battlements and stands at the top to find that Arya has disappeared into the fight again does he realize he made that sound.Ours is the Fury.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am going off the show for this fic. A few things are pulled from the books but this is me looking the show in the eye and telling my betas to hold my beer, and then shotgunning it anyway. Then attempting to do a kegstand while two of them beg me to stop adding ships and the other two throw commas at this fic like they are playing darts. 
> 
> Things I wanted to fix with this fic:  
> -Remove Sansa’s sexual abuse from the timeline entirely  
> -Make Gendry angry about some things, the right way  
> -deeper dive into emotions  
> -make the battle make FUCKING SENSE  
> -more blood magic  
> -more WARG MAGIC  
> -how in the hell did Gendry run to the wall? Anyone know?  
> -explain why they Did That™ to Joe’s hair  
> -make melisandre’s return have a better impact  
> -Sansa Stark needs to have a more Boss Ass Bitch moments  
> -Save Dickon Tarly for Sansa  
> -make Sansa and Arya friends again right off the bat because that was FUCKING STUPID  
> -wolves  
> -Address some unsolved issues with the world building that have bothered me since day one
> 
> How is Dickon Tarly alive you ask? Jon went with Tyrion and Daniella on that one attack and when that moment happened Jon was all “Tarly as in my best friend Sam Tarly?!” and Daniella was all “Okay so maybe killing the best friend’s brother is not a good courting idea.” So Dickon lives and comes north as like a prisoner for the time being. Then the Jorha thing happens and Daniella is like “oh i made the right choice here.” 
> 
> If i am perfectly honest this fic has a lot of holes in it. I am running off a cobbled together mash up of the show and the books. The majority of the fic is a fix it for The Long Night episode. Looking at it now i think i could have changed more and been happier with that but by the time the thought occured i had nearly 15k written and i wasn’t throwing it all out the window.

 

Arya Stark had not been his first friend. She wasn’t his last friend either. If he were being honest, he wasn’t exactly sure that they could be called best friends either. 

 

They had known each other, really known each other for about a year and a half, maybe two. That wasn’t a very long amount of time when he thought about it. It was the  _ kind _ of time they had spent together that year that changed the type of friend she was. Not a casual friendship of neighbors or that of two people in the same profession, it has been intense and life-sustaining. 

 

They had been on the run from the first moment they’d met. He had been running from certain death at the hands of his father’s wife and she had been running from a similar fate. They hadn’t known it when they met. He had no concept of the danger it was to be himself . 

 

She had known though. She had seen the swing of a sword and been dragged out of the lion’s den at the last second. 

 

But again, neither had known that they shared this fate, this path. 

 

They had been friends first out of necessity. The younger lads had to stick together, infighting or not.  All of them were alone then. Each boy had lost everything he had ever known or loved. He had lost the only home he had ever known. Arya had just lost more, and more recently. 

 

They clung together as a little group the four of them. In any other world Gendry would have ended up the natural leader of this pack of ruffians as the oldest. Only he hadn’t and none of them really cared that Arry seemed to be in charge. The youngest was simply too bold, too headstrong, too charismatic for them not to fall in line behind her lead. 

 

Gendry had been the first to notice ‘Arry’ was a girl. She had been incredibly easy to spot. He was just on the other side of puberty from the younger lads. Gendry was an age directly between being a child and being an adult and it gave him sight others did not have. He could tell the differences that the grown men could not. He’d kept it to himself for a time. Arry must have had a good reason to hide her gender. 

 

She had shared the truth with him first. The whole truth. Squatted down low next to him and then standing close and scared as she made herself vulnerable to him. And when the Gold Cloaks came for him she was the one who lied and saved his life before one of the others could turn him over. 

 

That’s what friends did, right? Kept secrets and saved each other’s lives. Now they shared more than just a path to the north, they shared secrets. They shared the truth. It bound them up in a way he did not have words to explain. A pact or a vow of some kind holding them together. 

 

Gendry tried not to think about those next few awful weeks. The pit in Harrenhal. The mud in his boots and hair. The stench. The screams. The fact that he couldn’t even speak openly because they were watched every minute of every day. 

 

He doesn’t remember getting picked or being led away. What he remembers from that moment is Arya’s eyes on him. She had looked at him and not looked away. Not when they strapped the bucket on. Not when he had averted his own eyes because he could feel her gaze. Not even when the Lord Tywin Lannister had ridden up to the pit and every other bloody person had kneeled. She had stood, hunched and cowed, but standing nonetheless and she had kept her eyes on him. 

 

He’d lived. 

 

They’d lived. 

 

Friend wasn’t the right word for what they were, what they had been. Arya Stark existed in a place between friend and family. A connection that felt unbreakable. 

 

Of course, that had been a silly thought, to assume anything could last. He had been torn from her in the end. And even if the Red Woman hadn’t come for his blood, they would have parted ways. She was a Stark of Winterfell and as long as she breathed her destiny was greater than his. 

 

Did he think of her in those years between? 

 

Only at night. Only when he laid in his cot and thought about where he was. He would lay there and think of her list. Gendry tried once to make a list of his own, people he would kill. It didn’t sound right in his head. 

 

Instead, he made a list of the lost. The people who had been taken from him. 

 

Mom. Arya. Lem. Hot Pie. Mom. Arya. Lem. Hot Pie. Mom. Arya…

 

* * *

 

A girl did not think of the bullheaded boy often. His loss was tied up in other things. She had her fingers around his arm as he was dragged from her grasp. The same way she had the Stark banner in her sight when they were burned before her. 

 

The two were tied up in a single thought in her mind: a boy with blue eyes who she had loved and her hope crumbling in blood and flame and Frey. It was a dagger in her heart. A hollow place in her chest that the wind blew through at night. 

 

She did not think of family. She dreamed of a pack on four legs instead of two. She dreamed of having the things she wanted. Arya dreamed of the brush of one who while not her equal was her chosen partner. There was an army to help her in these dreams. Some were her children and others were those who had joined her. 

 

In her dreams, she was not alone. In her dreams, she had a partner. No, that was the wrong word. A mate. He was strong and proud and together they ruled her pack. Her dreams were where things were safe. 

 

And yet.

 

And yet she did not have her siblings. The ones who were of her blood, who could stand as tall as she did. There were three of them still out there, and she could not find them. It’s fire in her blood. Not ice. Ice is a place of joy. Fire is what pain and loss feel like. 

 

A girl thinks of him once. There is a play in the city, the story of Westeros and its warring houses. A man stands on stage and pretends to be Renly Baratheon. His eyes are wrong but his hair is black and he calls the girl across from him “m’lady”.

 

The boy with black hair and blue eyes had been hers. He had belonged to her in a way no one else had. He did not belong to a lord first or a parent. His pack had been hers and hers alone. There was a word for a man that belonged to you that way but it wasn’t the right word to describe what he had been to her. 

 

When the Kindly Man holds Needle in his hands and asks her if she is ready to join them, truly, she sees her mother’s eyes, her brother’s eyes, her sister’s eyes, and the bullheaded boy’s eyes in her mind and knows that she cannot go forward. Her path leads back, towards the past, toward home. 

  
  


* * *

 

Gendry spends a very long time being angry. There’s a fire inside his soul that nothing seems to be able to quench. He tries beating it into metal. He tries beating it into other men at taverns after a drink. He tries screaming it into the ocean at night. 

 

He even tries to lose the feeling between the legs of a woman but her eyes are green, not grey and he leaves before his part is finished because it's wrong, all wrong. There’s something wrong with him, with the world. And he can’t seem to make the feeling go away. 

 

The city is too hot. Too crowded. He dreams of the Riverlands and of the taste of cold on his breath but doesn’t dare leave Kings Landing. The roads are no place for a lone traveler, not without a wolf. So he stays put and he waits. 

 

It’s waiting, not living.

 

* * *

 

There had been a time when Sansa would have hated having Arya home. She would have been insanely jealous at her sister’s ability to be friends with anyone no matter their class. She would have seen it as a failing on one of their parts. Now she was glad to have her little sister home.

 

Arya was painfully good at making friends. She changes personalities almost like changing faces. Arya can spar with the men in the training yard in the morning and spend the afternoon in the kitchens talking about bread. 

 

Sansa didn’t have the ability to speak to everyone as if they were the best of friends. She had carefully curated the ability to speak to everyone who worked in the castle or Winter Town with respect but she couldn’t slip into friendship with them. 

 

“What should we be worried about?” Sansa asks when Arya slips into her room late at night. They aren’t friends, not in the way friends are defined, but they are allies and sisters and they are determined to protect their home. 

 

“Some of the Lords are going to put up a stink about Jon going south because they have the memory of rodents.” Arya rolls her eyes and plops into bed next to Sansa. 

 

“Which ones?” Sansa asks because it's important to know who she is dealing with. Arya lists a longer set of names than Sansa had been expecting.

 

“Littlefinger is feeding the fires,” Arya explains to the unasked question. 

 

“Of course he is,” Sansa sighs. “I want him gone.”

 

“I can do that.” Arya offers with a wink. Sansa stares at her blankly until her sister shrugs.

 

“Not that way, publically. We need to make sure his desires die with him. Unless it’s public his agenda can live on. I’ve seen it happen before.” Sansa will not live through this again. She’s too close to freedom, real freedom to let the snake try to control her.

 

“How good is your acting?” Arya asks, with a smirk.

 

“How good is yours?” Sansa responds. The smile they share is real and warm. The make a plan. A trap. 

 

-

 

When Davos had first met the boy he had been young. Broad for his age, sure, but he had the kind of youth that couldn’t be bottled. Davos thinks maybe the word he is looking for is innocent. 

 

The first time Davos had seen him, he could have sworn he was looking at Renly. Davos had known Renly as a youth, had saved his life with smuggled onions. And this lad standing in front of Stannis had been a spitting image. The dark locks falling in his bright blue eyes and the sheepish expression that spoke of charm and youth. 

 

He had expected to find the lad about the same. Maybe taller, maybe older, but the same.

 

Instead, he met Stannis’ ghost. 

 

Gendry turned and Davos felt the breath in his lungs harden. Gone were the dark locks and now the lad wore his hair shorn close to his head. His eyes were hard and cold.  _ What terrible souls this war has made of us all, _ he thought. 

 

Davos doesn’t believe in the shite that the Red Woman spouted. He hadn’t planned to come for the boy when he went into Kings Landing. Only sailing into the bay had reminded him of the son he lost and Davos realized there might still be one boy who was living and breathing that he could protect from an end by fire. 

 

“You’ve come to take me with you?” Gendry asks and Davos realizes as the words are said that it was always what was going to happen. Here is the last of the Baratheons, the family Davos had dedicated his life to. It feels like destiny or fate. 

 

* * *

 

“You’re a lot shorter,” is out of his mouth before he knows it. Looking at the King of The North is like looking at her. King Jon looks just like her and something inside his chest, in his shoulders, comes loose. It’s like slipping into a pair of boots mostly worn in. The fit is nearly perfect. The way it feels to be close to something right. 

 

The King smiles. Gendry knew he would. She always smiled when he teased her.

 

Coming here was the right choice. He can’t have his dreams. There’s no turning back time to when he said no to her. He can do this instead. Gendry can protect her brother, her favorite brother, the second King in the North of her line. He can help. 

 

It’s better than nothing.

 

* * *

 

“Father always said that the man who passed the sentence should swing the sword.” Arya isn’t trying to shame her sister but she wants this reminder between them. Sansa looks momentarily struck by her words and Arya feels all the worse for saying them. 

 

“You think that I should do it?” Sansa asks Arya and the snow. 

 

“It would make for a good show of force to the Northern Lords.” The image of Sansa with a sword raised high above Littlefinger’s head is a thing of beauty and vengeance. “Lady Mormont would approve.” Arya throws in knowing that it will make her sister smile.

 

Lord Baelish is not her monster to slay, not really. He has been her sister’s tormenter and captor for as long as they have been fatherless. Arya doesn’t know all of it and she will not ask Sansa to relive it. She only knows that Lady Brienne is to thank for saving Sansa from a fate none of them dare consider. And yet when Sansa and Jon had needed to save Rickon they had been forced to call upon Petyr Baelish for aid, and once again Sansa was in his grasp. 

 

Arya could see how it was hurting her sister like water on stone, wearing away at the surface until it was smooth and shiny. The bright parts of Sansa, the girl who could laugh and joke and put toads in Arya’s bed, were polished smooth. And each moment Littlefinger breathed in their presence the light in Sansa’s eyes got a little bit further off. 

 

“I would never ask you to put it on your hands,” Arya says after Sansa has been silent too long. “It would hurt you too much. I will feel nothing.”

 

“Truly?” Sansa wonders. “You can take a life and all its futures and feel nothing?” 

 

“How do you feel when you eat meat?” Arya smirks. Sansa wrinkles her nose in mild disgust but nods her head.

 

“If you are sure—” Sansa looks hesitant.

 

“I am.” Arya cuts in, wanting the matter settled.  

 

Arya doesn’t say that she does feel something when she takes a life. Sansa doesn’t need the extra weight on her conscious. Better that Arya carries this burden for them both. Neither of them can bring back what they have lost, but Arya can spare one of them constant pain.

 

_ Death is a gift _ said the House of Black and White. She was not their servant but she could be a messenger for their god. She knew the steps. This would not be her first death and it would not be the last time she bestowed this gift.

 

It would simply be the first time she had given the many-faced god a present in the sight of others. 

 

Arya would be up to the task. For her brothers. For Sansa. For Winterfell. For the North. 

 

Arya Stark didn’t need things for herself. She could have her family and her home and that would be enough. 

 

* * *

 

Jon just wants his headache to go away but it’s not going to as long as he is traveling with this bunch.

 

“What are you whinging about then?” The Hound demands and Jon rubs at his temples.  _ Is it wrong to wish for death? _

 

“Fine!” Gendry shouts, “You want to know why I’m  _ really _ pissed?”

 

“No,” someone says sulkily but Jon refuses to turn around and watch this.  _ If no one is listening will the fight even be happening? _

 

“I was willing to leave Arya, my only friend in the world back then, to join The Brotherhood. I broke her heart for you sad fucks and you made it pointless!” Gendry basically screams and then stomps off past Jon, clearly deciding that he’s safer with Tormund than he is with the others. 

 

Jon turns to look at the three men that Robert Baratheon’s bastard has left speechless. They take turns looking at each other, each unsure of what to say to that outburst. The Hound looks the most distraught.

 

“Arya?” Jon asks them. “Arya Stark?”

 

“Aye,” The Hound confirms. “They traveled together, or some nonsense.”

 

“Huh.” Jon is surprised. No one had known what had become of Arya in the days and years after his father’s death. The ravens he had received never made any sense. One story had her married to Ramsay Bolton. Others had her dead in Kings Landing.

 

Yet the newest member of Jon’s retainers apparently held the secrets to Arya’s past. It was a odd feeling when he realized that just after meeting this boy he had been notified of Arya’s return to Winterfell.

 

_ It’s as if their fates are tied. _ A voice in his head spoke. It sounded like Bran. Jon shook his head. Now was not the time for such thoughts. Now was not the time for conversations about the past. 

 

There was a mission to complete. Everything else could wait until the realms of men were safe. He could think about his family and their futures and their pasts when The Others no longer marched south. 

 

* * *

 

The boy that was both Brandon Stark and Not Brandon Stark had a lot to consider.

 

The world was broken. Not the way that everyone thought it was. This was not man’s doing. Although in a way man had started it.

 

The wrongness went all the way down to the shifting of the earth beneath their feet. It was in the air and in the water and in every living thing that existed on the ground and in the sky. 

 

It had to be fixed. Fixing it would be difficult but the pieces were already in motion moving towards the points that intersect. 

 

He hadn’t understood it when The Three-eyed Raven had shown him the different pieces but he was starting to get the tapestry that had been woven. The final threads would have to be his doing. It hurt to know what would be done and the part he would play in the final solution. The people he would lose to save the world….

 

Forever.

 

He must remember that.

 

It would save the world forever. 

 

He turned his eyes to the future. He watched the possibilities unfold and tried desperately to find the right one and what he could do to get them there. 

 

It would take a dragon. 

 

* * *

 

Gendry has no idea why Jon thought he was the fastest. Because he is the youngest? Perhaps. Still, he has a mission. To run until he wants to die and then run some more. Gendry has never been a runner.

 

As he sprints through the falling snow his mind plays back something he saw years ago while in the Riverlands, wolves running through the trees. He sees their thin legs and their easy stride and pictures it in his mind. 

 

His legs keep moving but his mind is far away, under a tree in a wood, watching wolves run past.

 

_ I’ve missed running almost as much as I miss climbing. _ A voice echoes in his head. It doesn’t sound like his voice but Gendry finds he is not afraid. It’s a friendly voice speaking from another room. 

 

When his body collapses under the sight of The Wall he feels his limbs for the first time in ages. They ache. His heart is beating so fast in his chest that it shakes him. Yet he is at The Wall, alive, and able to speak the missive.

 

He doesn’t notice the flock of ravens that scatter upon his arrival. Neither does Davos. The voice in his head is gone now but Gendry thinks he will hear it again.

 

* * *

 

They agree that Arya should watch the procession from the shadows and report to Sansa after their new queen is settled in her rooms. If anyone sees it as a slight they can play it off as Arya being more feral than a lady and the Dragon Queen will be none the wiser. 

 

People are different when they don’t think they are being watched. People are even different when they think they are only watched by the common people. Arya pays three young boys to sneak into the trees by the King’s Road early in the morning and tell her what all the different Lords look like. She takes her own position in the mass of people at Winter Town. 

 

Arya is surprised how much it hurts to see Jon and not be able to run into his arms. She had thought herself ready for the sight of her brother alive and well. She had thought that seeing and holding Bran would prepare her for Jon. But of course, they are different brothers and different people. 

 

All her memories of Jon are that of affection, not the petty fights of a sibling on almost equal footing like she had with Bran. She remembers Jon’s big arms lifting her up when she fell down. She remembers how he always made her feel special even when everyone else made her feel small. 

 

Jon looks the same and yet so different. He’s so much older. Not only just in the way that she and Sansa are older but there is a knowledge on his face that years alone could not place there. A sadness. 

 

The Dragon Queen is beautiful and stern. She looks stiff in her saddle and on her face Arya sees fear and apprehension, unexpected emotions for a Queen to have. There is more going on with this Targaryen than any of them have heard. They will have to be careful. 

 

Arya doesn’t know the next group of people on horseback, advisors perhaps, they are unfamiliar to her but she keeps track of what they are doing, who they are speaking to and where they are looking. 

 

She is so consumed with her task that it takes her a moment to even realize who she is looking at. She clocks the nearly shaved head, the wide eyes, and the uncertain grip on the reins before her mind shouts  _ Gendry _ . 

 

Her past rides into Winterfell on two horses. The first is a man grown now and Arya finds herself at a loss as to what to think of her friend now that he is within reach once more. The other horse carries The Hound and something like pain stirs in her chest.

 

The leaver and the left.

 

Both had been a part of her pack and both had returned to her even if they did not know it. 

 

If her heart beats in her chest she can blame it on the Dragons that fly overhead. If her face feels flushed she can claim excitement of seeing the Unsullied in person. No one has to know. Even if she is only lying to herself, it can still be a lie that is believable. 

  
  


* * *

 

He wants to run to her. His palms itch to brush at her hair. His arms remember lifting her in anger and in joy. It’s like a part of him he didn’t know he lost is there and all he has to do is reach out and reconnect it. A ghost of a limb he once had.

 

And yet he won’t. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. She’s still short but now her hair is long. She’s still a princess. Or is she? He’s still a bastard. That’s not changing. 

 

What do you say to the person you have dreamed of for years? What do you say to the person who you disappointed the most and failed? What do you say to someone like Arya Stark of Winterfell while standing in her forge? 

 

“You look good.” He wants to die. Gendry hopes the Seven will answer his prayers and just open the ground to swallow him whole right where he stands. She cocks her head to the side and squints at him like he’s insane. “You’re still short,” he quips because it’s instinctual to insult her.

 

The kick to the shins seems to be instinctual as well. 

 

The steel-toed boots are new.

 

* * *

 

Sansa puts all men into two categories now. Those who should be listened to and those who should not. She tries to keep most of the important people or those men that do important work to daily life in the first column. They aren’t really  _ men _ to her anymore. 

 

If her heart beats faster when one of them is near it’s because he is too near and she wants to take a step back. If her face flushes it’s because she dislikes learning when she is wrong. 

 

She no longer dreams of love. She hasn’t for a very very long time if she is really honest with herself. She understands in a distant part of her mind that one day she will have to marry. Bran continues to insist he is no longer Brandon Stark and cannot be Lord of Winterfell. There will come a time when alliances will need to be made and the house needs to continue. Sansa understands it will be her duty to fulfill. 

 

Until then she remains numb to it all. A distant dream. 

 

“My Lady?” A knight is standing in her path. Sansa looks up and realizes this is one she had been introduced to. The prisoner. The brother of Sam. Dickon Tarly who had been granted reprieve from his ‘captivity’ as thanks for what his brother did for the Queen’s favorite advisor. 

 

“What can I do for you Ser Tarly?” Sansa asks in her Lady of Winterfell voice. He looks at her face and then down at his feet, his cheeks going red. 

 

“Um… I was wondering…” He swallows and clasps his hands together. “There’s work to be done in the castle. I’d like your permission to help.”

 

“My permission?” Sansa does not quite understand what is happening here.

 

“The Dragon Queen…” He looks up at her from his ducked head. “My life is in the hands of my brother, he places his trust in Jon Snow and….” And Sansa is the one that Jon listens to when it comes to issues about Winterfell.

 

“What work needs doing?” Sansa asks realizing what he is really asking. He wants permission to make a recommendation.

 

“It’s the glass gardens.” He’s picking at his nails as he speaks still avoiding looking directly at her. “The harvesting and planting—”

 

“Your family is from The Reach.” Sansa remembers suddenly. “Of course we would welcome suggestions for improvement. Make a list. Until then feel free to help with any part of the gardens you see fit. You have my permission to tell them I sent you.”

 

“Thank you, my Lady,” Ser Tarly breathes in relief. His bow to her is exceptionally low and she notices that his ears are nearly bright red. When he straightens to his full impressive height he looks at her directly, barely for a moment, and the blush on his face creeps down his neck.  

 

Sansa watches him walk away unsure of what that was but knowing it was something she should keep an eye on.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“How can someone so little be such a….. OW! Arry!” A voice shouts in the forge. Sansa stops on her way to the rookery at the entrance to the forge. “Give it,” the blacksmith demands.

 

Arya is standing against a table with the blacksmith who had come with Jon pressed against her front, reaching behind her to something she is holding out of reach. Arya is smiling a wide and untroubled smile like this is the best game she has ever played. 

 

His face is a mixture of frustration, acceptance, and a shocking kind of pain that Sansa only has the vaguest memory of existing. Longing. That’s the pain this man is feeling as he wrestles her sister for some tool. 

 

“What’s his name?” Sansa asks the assistant blacksmith who is walking out of the forge. “The head blacksmith from the south?”

 

“Gendry Waters my lady.” The blacksmith gives a little bow.

 

So he’s the bastard of a highborn and he’s in love with her sister. This could be tricky. Sansa isn’t sure what she should do about this. Send him away? No that won’t do. Keep him so busy he can’t possibly do anything untoward? Isn’t he already being run ragged with their demands for dragonglass? 

 

Arya turns to watch Gendry as he finally leaves their scuffle and returns to his work. Her expression is a mix of desire and anticipation. 

 

Well, that complicates things considerably. 

 

* * *

 

“Shouldn’t you be sitting at the high table?” Beric asks.

 

“Shouldn’t you be dead?” Arya snaps back. Gendry turns to look at her with scolding eyebrows and she is suddenly extremely tired of him not being angry. “Don’t give me that look. How are you not pissed at them? They sold you! And you’re just fine with it now?”

 

“Not really.” Gendry chews his bread and stares down Beric. “But we had a bit of an understanding while we were beyond the wall and Davos saved my life.” Gendry shrugs. “I can be pissed if we defeat the army of the dead.” 

 

_ Because that’s an answer. _ Arya thinks with a roll of her eyes.

 

“What happened with the Red Bitch anyway?” Arya stabs at her dinner wishing she was stabbing at something else. The man sitting across from her flinches at her language and Arya makes an ugly face at him in response. She’s pretty sure he’s Dickon Tarly, Sam’s little brother, and honestly he might be the most innocent person Arya has ever met. 

 

“She wanted my blood,” Gendry answers without a flinch or a shrug because he’s used to her language.

 

“What for?” Arya asks around a mouthful of bread and carrots. Beric grimaces at her. She just opens her mouth wider.

 

“I’m Robert Baratheon’s bastard son.” Everyone within hearing stops eating and moving all at once. Beric’s one eye is wide in shock. Dickon Tarly is choking and trying to cough up his food soundlessly. The Hound is staring at his plate like it must be poisoned. Two knights of the Vale are so pale they match their armor. 

 

“It’s why the Gold Cloaks were after me back then,” Gendry explains to Arya alone. 

 

“And the Red Woman wanted your blood to…” Arya waves her fork around gesturing at nothing and everything.

 

“Magic.” Gendry shrugs.

 

“And Davos saved you?” Arya probes. Gendry’s face is closed off. He looks angry but angry at a distance. Anger from the past.

 

“She was going to burn me alive for her god,” Gendry growls between gritted teeth. 

 

“The Lord of Light had other plans for you,” Beric interjects. 

 

“Fuck your god,” The Hound spits and gets up from the table. 

 

“Is the cursing a Northern thing or…?” Dickon asks the people still seated but no one answers him.

 

“I’m still pissed,” Arya tells Gendry. He huffs a breath out his nose and smiles down at his dinner.

 

* * *

Sam Tarly doesn’t have a great relationship with his brother. The simple fact was they didn’t really know one another that well. Dickon had been so young when Sam had left to join the Night’s Watch. Sam had been too old when Dickon was born to be interested in his little brother. So they had no formal relationship besides that of blood ties. 

 

To say he was surprised that his brother sought him out was an understatement. Dickon looked surprised as well. The only one who was smiling was Gilly, who was delighted that Sam was making up with his brother. If that’s what this was. 

 

“I don't want to disturb you—” Dickon stammers as he fidgets on the chair in Sam and Gilly’s room. Young Sam sits by the fire with a wooden horse toy.

 

“We are glad to have you,” Gilly tells him before Sam can think of something to say. “We are happy you are at Winterfell.”

 

“And not dead with Father,” Sam wishes his mouth didn’t do this when he is nervous. Dickon’s face is a mask of horror and then suddenly he is laughing. Sam sees that Gilly is smiling as well. This is going better than could be expected. 

 

The three of them eat the evening meal in the room with relative ease and Sam is just about to breathe a sigh of relief that this ordeal is over and he could get back to his reading when Gilly decided she wanted to know more about his brother.

 

“How are you finding Winterfell?” Gilly smiles, clearly pleased with herself for using the wording she has heard Lady Sansa speaking.

 

“Very well,” Dickon agrees. “The Starks are excellent hosts.” 

 

_ This was exactly what dinner had been like when his sisters were learning etiquette.  _

 

“Lady Sansa is so beautiful,” Gilly continues happily. Dickon chokes on his bread and Sam stops eating because his brother isn’t the type to choke on food.

 

“Aye,” Dickon croaks. “She is beautiful… and wise.” 

 

Sam knew that tone of voice. He sounds like that when he talks about Gilly. He can’t help but sound  _ soft _ , like his thoughts are warm and cozy in a fine blanket. He tries to catch Gilly’s eye to see if she understands what he has just learned but she doesn’t see him.

 

Dickon clears his throat and squares his shoulders. Sam freezes up knowing that particular combination to mean that Dickon is readying himself to say something he is afraid will upset someone. It takes everything in Sam’s being not to look at where he has stashed Heart’s Bane. He is not ready to give the sword back to his brother.

 

“I was hoping to ask for your advice,” Dickon begins. 

 

“Um…” Sam knows a great deal but he is nearly certain none of it is something his brother could possibly want to know.

 

“How do you make your intentions known?” Dickon practically croaks, his voice breaking. “For courting and uh…” He doesn’t finish his thought. 

 

If someone had asked Sam moments ago what the most unbelievable thing he had ever seen had been, his answer would have been him killing a White Walker. Now he can say with complete certainty that it is his handsome and capable brother coming to him for advice about courting. 

 

“Sam helped me run away from my father,” Gilly supplies helpfully. “Although I imagine that opportunity won’t present itself.”

 

“No,” Dickon shakes his head. “Lady S—” He freezes, eyes wide in horror and Sam is going to drink so much wine the very moment this conversation is over. He’s not cut out for this. Sam doesn’t have books about love… wait. He does.Those fictional stories tucked in the back of the Winterfell library. The ones with the Ladies and Pirates and handsome knights. 

 

“I might have a few books that could be of some help,” Sam answers cheerfully. 

 

* * *

 

“We can’t beat them in a straight fight so we need to force them into a funneled location.” 

 

“The Dothraki—” Daenerys begins.

 

“Are just as good at normal combat as they are on horseback,” Tyrion points out. “We are not fighting ordinary men here.”

 

“What do you propose we do with my armies then?” 

 

“Shield walls on top of real walls.” Arya doesn’t see who says this but she approves. 

 

“Use the dragons to keep the attack focused, burn the sides of the front lines,” she suggests putting the little dragon pieces at the sides of the castle. 

 

“How much oil and pitch can we spare for this fight?” Sansa asks the Maester.

 

“My Lady we have put all of it towards the battle,” he answers.

 

“Is that wise?” Sansa asks the room at large and Arya is glad that there is someone here to ask something like that.

 

“It’s the best thing,” Jon explains. “Better to have more than not have enough.” Sansa seems to accept this for the correct answer. 

 

“If we get the second trench done we should look at adding two more pointed outward from the North Gate. The Vale was near impenetrable because there was only one path in. We should work to create a similar situation,” Royce explains. 

 

“Do it,” Sansa orders and he leaves to take her commands to the men. There is a moment when the room is silent because the Dragon Queen feels that should have been her call but neither her sister or her brother say anything and they move on.

 

“On to where to place our different forces and fighters—”

 

* * *

 

“What’s this I hear about you being a fighter?” Arya asks him while he’s in the middle of pouring molten dragonglass into a mold because she believes in distracting him during delicate tasks. Gendry doesn’t even turn to look at her. “Your sword form was terrible the last time I saw you.”

 

“I don’t fight with a sword,” Gendry grits out as he sets down the mold carefully on the anvil. 

 

“Stubbornness isn’t considered a fighting style,” Arya quips.

 

“Ha ha.” Gendry doesn’t have the brain power for this. He hasn’t had a rest in nearly three days. Sleeping doesn’t count when you practically fall into unconsciousness. “I fight with a hammer.”  _ Now, where had he put the mallet? _

 

“Can I see it?” Arya pivots on a foot so she is directly in front of him. Gendry gives up trying to work. It was an uphill battle the moment she set foot in the forge. 

 

“I don’t know where it is,” Gendry admits. He left it with Clegane when he ran for Eastwatch. There is a very good chance his hammer is now buried in snow north of The Wall.

 

“You don’t know where your weapon is?” The disgust and shock on Arya’s face could sour milk. “What are you planning to fight with?” Gendry holds up the hammer with dragonglass he has poured hours into constructing. Arya’s mouth falls open in an expression not unlike someone with a terrible fever breathing out of their mouth because their nose is clogged. Her brows are scrunched up and her mouth is wide and slack. He knows his face is equally ridiculous, his eyes wide and lips thin. 

 

“I want to see,” Arya commands, dragging him out of the forge by his shirt front.

 

“You what?” Gendry looks back over his shoulder at the forge and escape of whatever this is about to be.

 

“I want to see you fight,” she clarifies. He’s still lost. Who is he supposed to fight? Nearly everyone is digging trenches or building the other traps and gates. He can’t possibly fight one of the Dothraki or worse one of the Unsullied.

 

It’s not ’til they are outside the castle gate in the open snow next to the ring where Lady Brienne is drilling men and women that Gendry realizes exactly who he is going to be fighting.

 

“Arya—” he starts. She doesn’t even pretend to realize he is protesting, just orders some squire out of the space and draws her sword. “I’m not going to—”

 

“I’m not putting you on the line unless I know you can hold your own.” Her sword spins and swishes in her hand. “Show me you can fight or you are on the battlement.” 

 

For exactly one moment Gendry considers forfeiting now. He shouldn’t be fighting with her. She’s a lady and a princess more than twice over. He doesn’t want to hurt her. They are friends. There are a lot of very good reasons that he should bow out now, take his punishment and hold a place inside the castle.

 

Only he’s tired, sleep-deprived, and at this very moment more than half pissed to have his work interrupted. Gendry exhales, cracks his neck, rolls his shoulders, and heaves his weapon on his shoulder. 

 

“Fine,” he grits out. 

 

Gendry isn’t an elegant fighter. He doesn’t have any formal training. What he has is a body made for swinging heavy objects at speed. The fights he has gotten in over the years have ranged in purpose and length but mostly they have been brawls. He doesn’t have a stance like the knights or the Unsullied. What he has are elbows and knees, and a complete disregard for anything close to chivalry. 

 

The fight is a mess. 

 

Arya is fast on her feet and knows how to dodge him. His arm is over her head because she has dropped down and she probably thinks she has an opening but he’s got a knee and elbow coming for her. She slides her weight to her back foot at the last second and he nearly falls on his face. 

 

He’s not agile enough to roll so he ends up kneeling and having to push up from there. Arya is behind him and he thinks he hears someone off to the side saying something about her tying with Lady Brienne in sparring. 

 

She’s going to be faster than him no matter what. Giving her space to dodge and twirl around him will tire him out long before he can land anything close to a blow. He needs to corner her. She can’t match him for strength. 

 

Arya isn’t expecting him to punch her because she moves her weapons from one hand to another like she is expecting some kind of deflection on his part. She doubles over and slides back in the slippery snow. He doesn’t give her time to recover pressing forward with his hammer and his fists in turn.

 

When she attempts to side step he throws an elbow out and nearly catches her in the nose. The next time he gives up solid footing to trap her in his steady movement towards the wooden fence. If this were a real fight he would be in trouble because he is pretty sure Arya has tapped him with the flat of her sword at least twice but she hasn’t stopped him and they are nearly to the fence.

 

Gendry has half a second warning. He is completely sure that he has her backed into the fence when she disappears from beneath him and his feet leave him. He falls, twisting, hoping not to hit his head. Her dagger is at his throat when his mind steadies. He can feel the cool press of it on his burning flesh.

 

Arya’s on tiptoe in front of him so she can look him in the eye. Her arm brushes his bare flesh with each breath because he’s practically panting from the effort of the fight. At least her face is flushed and her breathing is nearly as harsh, hard puffs of air across his neck. 

 

Her eyes are as bright as freshly washed steel and her lips look berry red this close. The dagger bobs as he swallows. Neither of them moves and Gendry can feel something between them.

 

Someone starts clapping. Arya looks away and steps back.

 

“You have too many openings. Don’t get into a spot by yourself, stay next to someone with more experience in fights. It’ll help,” she orders before sheathing her dagger and marching off into the castle.

 

Gendry’s legs give out in slow motion and he is left sitting with only the fence holding him up. His heart is beating so hard he can feel it in his fingers. Which is rather astonishing that he has any blood left in his hands. He’s pretty sure all of it went further down. 

 

“Aren’t they fucking brilliant?” the giant red-haired man asks. “Nothing like a woman who can beat you in battle. They make the best fucks.” 

 

“Thanks?” Gendry responds, dazed. None of this feels real. 

 

“As long as you know that I’m after the big woman.” Tormund gives Gendry a hand up. “We are going to have giant babies together.”

 

“Sure.” Gendry is suddenly remembering that all of his previous conversations with Tormund have been equally one-sided. 

 

“You and the little wolf will make small but deadly babies. Those can be good too.” Tormund gives Gendry a final pat before walking off. As if he didn’t just turn Gendry’s brain into molten steel with his words. As if Gendry isn’t losing all sense of reason and logic and understanding at this moment. 

 

* * *

 

Sansa is skilled in the art of diplomacy and subtlety but neither will work on her sister so she goes with blunt and straightforward. 

 

“The new blacksmith who Jon brought home is incredibly handsome,” Sansa begins with no preamble. Arya chokes on her ale and then glares at Sansa. 

 

“What?” Arya looks blank when Sansa studies her face which is rare. Her sister might not be the bouncing child she once was but she still keeps her emotions on her face and right now there are none. 

 

“He has lovely eyes and rather impressive muscles,” Sansa continues in the face of whatever her sister hiding. It’s incredibly hard not to smile. 

 

“I guess.” Arya won’t meet her eyes now and Sansa is almost entirely certain she has read this situation correctly. 

 

“If we survive what is to come,” Sansa shakes her head and goes for optimism, “When we survive this I wanted to discuss marriage with you.” The look Arya gives her could kill lesser women. “I had Jon swear that he would never force me to marry anyone I did not choose when he was crowned King. It's in writing. I think the Dragon Queen will honor it.”

 

“Okay…” Arya says with a puzzled expression. “Is this about Dickon Tarly?” Arya asks. It’s Sansa’s turn to choke on air.

 

“What would make you say that?” Sansa is horrified to realize her face feels warm.

 

“You stare at him a lot.” Arya grins. “He’s got lovely eyes and rather impressive muscles.” Arya wiggles her eyebrows and Sansa has to roll her eyes at having her words thrown back at her. It was a mistake to think she could control this conversation. 

 

“Yes, well.” Sansa doesn’t know where to go with this.

 

“Funny that we would both find the same sort of man appealing.” Arya takes a bite of food and chews loudly.

 

“And what sort is that?” Sansa feels she knows the answer but part of having a sibling is sometimes letting them deliver the witty final line.

 

“Big and stupid.” Arya’s grin looks like a wolf baring its teeth. Sansa cannot contain her laugh which seems to loosen the same sound out of Arya. 

 

“They are infinitely easier to control when they are stupid.” Sansa giggles. 

 

* * *

 

Arya was not one to discount the words of her sister. At least not anymore. Sansa had been subtle about it in her own way, asking Arya about Gendry. Not outright asking of course. Dancing around it so that Arya could have the dignity of denial without lying. 

 

Only.

 

Arya does not dream of marriage. She does not dream of a castle or babies or power. When she dreams she has four legs. Even when she is awake, Arya finds that the path others take does not hold appeal to her. Even before everything fell to dust in Kings Landing she had no dreams of a man at her side. Her father had told her one day she would marry a lord but even then she had known it would not be her fate. 

 

What she wants is a pack. A family. A bound. People who are tied to her in ways that mean that they can never leave her. Not just oaths because oaths are weak and words of men can never be trusted. Her pack has to be made of something stronger than words.  Blood was best.

 

If she was going to keep him, make Gendry stay, it was going to have to be something as strong as blood. Otherwise, he would leave her again. He had belonged to her once and still he had gone. First in words and then in truth. She needed something stronger than words and faster than blood. 

 

Arya isn’t sure if what she feels for him was love. It doesn’t feel like the songs. There aren’t flowers in the air or golden light. Her heart doesn’t flutter. Her palms don’t sweat. She doesn’t daydream about walking through the Godswood with him. Mostly she daydreams about what his skin will feel like under her hands. 

 

What she feels about Gendry isn’t love, or at least not any love she has ever heard of. It’s something low in her gut that cramps like hunger. It’s angry and possessive. It cracks her open when she doesn’t expect it, and she finds herself eleven again and still wondering at the world. 

 

Womanhood has always felt like a burden to Arya. Something she had to carry just to make her life more difficult. This might be the only time it is not a hindrance. Here, in this way, she can be happy to be a woman.

 

* * *

 

Dickon Tarly had thought himself a man before he came north. No that’s not true. He had thought himself a man before the Dragon. And then he had known he was nothing but a child. All his practice fighting and leading had been just that, practice. Now he understood that his father had been playing in a box of sand while others played with lives. 

 

It was like his eyes had been opened to the real world the day the Dragon Queen came to The Reach. His eyes opened and his life spared. Here in the freezing north, he had learned more in a few months than he had ever known in his entire life.

 

He learned about the Old Gods and The Wall. He learned about smithing because every able-bodied man was smithing dragonglass in turns night and day. Dickon learned how politics really worked watching Lady Stark, Lord Snow, and the Dragon Queen negotiate daily matters. He learned that there were fighters better than him, faster than him, and both of those people were women. 

 

Dickon also learned what that feeling was that Sam must feel. The one that had driven him to break his oaths and run off from The Watch. Dickon had always known in a distant sort of way what men and women did together at night. The knights at his house would speak of it but he was also too shocked to think on it. 

 

All it had taken was one look of grey eyes on a strong face and suddenly Dickon understood why The Watch wasn’t supposed to have wives, why men fought in jousts for the favor of a lady. Lady Stark was the most beautiful thing he had ever witnessed. 

 

She was carved from marble. As far as he could tell she glowed in the dark walls of Winterfell like she was blessed with the light of The Seven. When she gave orders the men listened and obeyed. 

 

Dickon found that he wanted her to command him. Wanted orders to follow at her word so that he could come back to report and receive a pleased smile in return. He would gladly swear his sword to her if it meant he could be granted a smile from time to time.

 

He did not hope for more. He was a prisoner. The Dragon Queen had seized his lands and his rights and he was now nothing more than a man with armor. He would never be worthy of someone like Sansa Stark. Not even when his father was living would he have been on the same tier as Lady Sansa. 

 

So he convinced himself it was enough to serve her. He told himself it would have to be enough. He could devote his life to the Starks and it would be worth it. Jon Snow was the one who had saved his life in repayment for the friendship of his brother. Dickon could be happy serving this noble house for the rest of his life. 

 

If it was his destiny to lay down his life so that Lady Sansa could survive the coming night then he would meet it without regrets. He should have been long dead, ashes on the ground back home in The Reach. Every breath he had was a gift. Gifts can be given to others. If there was ever anyone he would gift his life to it was Lady Sansa Stark. 

 

* * *

 

A good assassin knows all the details, studies their target, knows their habits and their idiosyncrasies. A good assassin has a plan in place. A good assassin leaves little to chance.

 

Arya has a bath first and brushes out her hair carefully aftward. She doesn’t apply perfume or oils because that would give the game away. She mustn’t leave a scent. She should raise no suspicion. 

 

She polishes her weapons and dresses carefully in the firelight. She has put special attention into her clothing making sure it has the right amount of movement and coverage for her purposes but not so much that anyone would notice something amiss.

 

When she was satisfied with her image in the mirror she applies the face of Lady Arya Stark falling into the lofty look that meant no one will question her. She exited her chambers knowing her mission would be a success.

 

* * *

 

He had been surprised when he had been given a room. He had assumed that he would sleep in the forge but Davos had apparently told someone, probably Lady Sansa, that Gendry been the one to get the message to Queen Daenerys and thus saved Lord Snow’s life. This meant he was considered a member of the household and not a servant.

 

So he had a room. It was small and tucked into an upper corner of Winterfell. The lower rooms closer to the springs were the warmest rooms. His was… cozy. It was not as cold as others because it was connected to the main vents for the hot spring. Gendry thinks that maybe this room is in fact too good for him with its large soft bed and wide fireplace. He even gets a bath every other day. 

 

Gendry thinks it’s weird to take a bath the night before a battle but there had been one in his room when he left the forge so surely someone had ordered it. He wasn’t really in the mindset to question a good thing right now. He was tired and too awake at the same time, the knowledge of what was to come lighting up every nerve ending 

 

The knock startles him. Had he forgotten something at the forge? He throws on a shirt and trousers, stepping back into boots as he yanks the door open. 

 

It’s Arya on the other side of the door, because of course it is and he has his mouth open to ask what’s wrong. She pushes past him and Gendry closes the door behind her without thinking about what he just did. 

 

“Is something wrong with the weapon?” He asks as Arya stalks around his room tapping her finger against different objects, the bed frame, the mantle, above the fire, the dresser in the corner. 

 

“Why would something be wrong with my staff?” Arya pauses, turning to look at him. She looks different. Gendry can’t put his finger on what is different about her but she does look changed. Maybe it’s her hair. There’s… more of it?

 

“I don’t know, I figured that’s why you’re here.” Gendry sighs. Arya has always been tricky to pin down when he asks her questions. It used to be because she was lying, poorly, all the time. Now it’s because she’s not sure if she is lying or telling the truth when she says things and is figuring it out in the moment. 

 

He knows something happened in Bravos. He knows she speaks of The Game and getting better at lying. He knows she always looks slightly uncomfortable around him. He knows she never used to look that way. Arya seems to get along perfectly with everyone but him, and maybe Beric. He just can’t figure out why she struggles to meet his eyes when they talk or why she has half her conversations with him facing the wall.

 

Gendry watches Arya stiffen, shake herself, and then step forward into his space. Once upon a time she did this often, stood close enough for him to feel her warmth. She doesn’t really do it now. Her distance is greater than it was when they were young but she is still much closer than she has been in a long while.

 

“You trust me, right?” Arya looks up at him and her eyes are huge and grey like the sky before a storm.

 

“Of course, with my life,” Gendry admits in a rush, his chest emptying. She has to know that he would follow her to the ends of the earth. He walked through the gates of Harrenhal unarmed at her word. 

 

“Okay.” Her voice has a shake to it and she steps in closer to him. He can feel her at this distance as she is practically vibrating. “I trust you too,” Arya admits in a rush. 

 

Gendry doesn’t know what’s happening here but his heart is hammering a gallop in his chest. Arya Stark looks nervous and anything that can do that makes him feel out of control. He realizes, having forgotten in the rush of her presence, what is going to happen in a few hours and feels like screaming. But it’s not the time to fall apart. He won't let himself because clearly Arya needs him for something and he would rather go beyond the wall again than fail her. 

 

He reaches out and rubs his hands up her arms, a soothing motion he remembers from his mother long ago when he was small and scared of her leaving him. 

 

“Hey,” Gendry tries, not knowing where to go after that. He doesn’t need to.

 

Arya stands on tiptoe and grabs the front of his shirt, pulling his mouth down onto hers. It’s not Gendry’s first kiss, but it feels like it should be just for how bad it is. His eyes are open. Their noses bump. Arya is so much shorter than him that he is leaning at an uncomfortable angle.

 

He’s not the only one aware that it wasn’t a very good kiss because Arya pulls back looking determined and annoyed and then yanks at his shirt with more force. Gendry bends because his body is faster than his brain and he is conditioned to go where Arya Stark leads. 

 

The second kiss is better. His back and neck are at odd angles, but their lips meet without their noses this time and Arya has her hand on his jaw. He kisses back because he has to: it's important. 

 

He pulls away because he needs to know what this is more.

 

“Arya,” Gendry breathes into the space between their lips. “Are you—” She pulls at him, clearly wanting him to obey but he has to know. “Why?” He asks finally getting a little distance on her.

 

He knows where this is leading suddenly. Gendry feels completely stupid for not realizing the moment she showed up in his room. He had been drawn a bath. She had brushed her hair out. She’s wearing different clothes. They feel lighter than what she has had on for the last few weeks. She is asking him not with words but with actions.

 

Gendry wants to say yes. He wants this more than he has ever really thought about. Because it was bad to think your friend is beautiful when she is barely more than a girl. Because it's bad to want something you can never have. Because he had known that nothing could come of loving Arya Stark other than pain and heartbreak.

 

And yet she might be the one person in this world he wants close to him. Close enough to slide one of her many knives into his heart. She is going to ruin him and he is going to let her do it. He knows this.

 

“What do you mean why?” Arya scoffs. “Because—”

 

“Why me,” Gendry tries again. “Why now?” 

 

He knows it's wrong to still be touching her. He should remove his hands and keep them out of her hair and away from the pink tint of her ears. But his hands tend to do what they want and the rest of him has to just play along. 

 

“I trust you,” Arya snaps at him teeth clicking. “I don't know how you can be this stupid.” She shoves at him and Gendry doesn't have strong footing because of bending to kiss her. He falls back onto the bed. Arya chases after him, climbing onto his lap. “Are you saying no?” She asks him as she cages him in with her body.

 

Arya Stark is a force of nature. Why did he ever think there was any avoiding her? Leaving her? You can’t outrun storms. He gives in to the pull and stops fighting.

 

It’s easier to kiss seated. Their heights don’t matter here. Her hands cup his face as their lips slide together in the easy glide of acceptance. Arya tries to speed it up, moving against him with her mouth and her body but Gendry has waited too long to rush it.

 

He wraps his arms around her and holds her to him. Gendry remembers trying this once before with a girl he had been seeing in King's Landing. Holding still against the urge to move. Arya fights him at first. Grinding down on him and pushing her tongue into his mouth but he’s a million times more stubborn than she can ever hope to be. She gives in with a sigh and Gendry gets his hands around her face to kiss her properly, slowly, adoringly. 

 

“Off,” Arya commands yanking at his shirt. Gendry smiles and leans back to pull it over his head. 

 

“Tell me if you need to stop,” he says as her hands remove her own shirt.

 

“No,” Arya snaps diving back into his mouth.

 

“I mean it.” Gendry pulls back, insistent. “I don't want to hurt you.” Not again. Not ever if he can help it. 

 

“Gods you’re stupid.” Arya rolls her eyes and shoves her hands down his trousers. 

 

It gets messy for a minute. Arya can’t get a grip on him, just her palm flat against him and Gendry is too keyed up to help. She growls and tries to yank off her own trousers but she is sitting astride him. They end up on opposite sides of the bed trying to untangle from the legs of their trousers. 

 

It’s easier after that. Skin to skin, there is an electricity Gendry has known about for years but hadn’t owned the words to describe. It’s a bit like when the used to wrestle. Arya trying to push him forward, faster, harder, more and Gendry holding himself back, slower, softer, longer. 

 

He uses all the things he has learned, as if they were practice for this moment. Yet he has so much to learn. Arya doesn’t melt when he touches her in a way she likes. Her face goes tight and she pants soundlessly. 

 

Gendry wants more. More time. More skin. More hands and mouths and feeling. Rubbing his callouses against her nipples is an awakening. A lesson. 

 

“Please,” Arya whispers her teeth on his ear. 

 

He finds the oil from his bath. Who had told him that it made it easier with more? Does it matter? Arya keeps her eyes open, forehead pressed against his. They breathe the same air and the world falls away as he holds her in his arms and makes damn sure she gets what she wants before he is even close. 

 

“More,” she orders him.

 

“As you wish.”

 

Not a lesson. A prayer. Gendry doesn’t want to learn Arya. He wants to be under her, hands raised, soul open. This is why people get married and devote themselves to that one person forever. It’s not a loss. It’s a devotional at the altar of their being.

 

She shatters in his arms. Gendry isn't one for sunsets, but he knows a thing or two about swords. The beauty of metal and its siren song. 

 

He could drown. 

 

* * *

 

Arya didn’t know it would feel like this. She understood it would feel good. She had seen enough of fucking to understand that it was supposed to feel good. But this thing she was feeling wasn’t exactly enjoyment.

 

It was a cracking in her chest. The crumbling of the walls around her heart. 

 

There’s a great aching hole that lives inside her. She can feel the wind blow through it if she concentrates. It’s where her father used to live in her heart. Where her mother made a home. It’s where her hopes and dreams resided. 

 

Comfort. That’s the thing that used to exist inside her. Comfort. The act of being comforted. The sensation of hands on her head, on her back, on her face. The relief of touch.

 

Arya hadn’t realized that no one was touching her until Gendry has warm giant hands encircling her, cradling her. Sansa isn’t touching Arya, not really. They might clasp hands or hug but there are layers and layers of clothing and trauma between them. Bran isn’t really the person to offer comfort as he is now. Jon could be a source of comfort to Arya but he’s wrapped up in the war and falling in love with a Queen.

 

Being touched is an addiction. Arya wants to drink it in. She wants to open her jaw wide and clamp her teeth down on the meat of Gendry’s shoulder and never let go. She wants to swallow this sensation whole, raw. 

 

She was shaking. Arya wasn’t sure when that had happened. It didn’t matter because Gendry seemed to understand, he always understood. It was why she kept coming back to him. Because when she didn’t have the right words, the right actions, he still knew what she wanted. He always had.

 

“I got you,” he whispers into her hair as his hands run patterns on her back, into her hair, and all the way back down again until she feels steady again. 

 

Arya wants that again, only more. She wants him inside her for real this time. She wants to consume him. 

 

He nearly throws her off when she slides onto him without warning, a startled groan leaving his mouth. There. That’s more of what she wants. It’s not fair if he doesn’t open wide to her. 

 

It doesn’t feel as bad as she was told. Just full. Arya shifts and finds that doing that feels better, the sparks down her body come back when she does that. Gendry holds her hips and stares up at her in awe.

 

He had been too composed, too patient. Making sure to use his hands softly on her. Get her ready with his determined brow furrowed in concentration. Fuck that. Arya wants to feel. Really feel. 

 

“Come on,” she taunts feeling the burn in her legs as she moves over him. “You can’t hurt me.” He shakes his head, resisting. Arya crashes their mouths together pulling his lip with her teeth. “I want all of you.”

 

That does it.

 

Gendry lets go of whatever he was holding back. It’s fucking beautiful. It’s a branding inside both of them, the hard pace and the scrape of nails and teeth. She gives him everything and he answers. 

 

Her peak builds before she realizes it’s crashing down over her in a wave that nearly washes her away. They keep going. The room is too hot. The air is too close. His hands are so warm and they hold her so perfectly as he brings them together like a hammer to a sword. 

 

The last time she breaks he comes with her. Gendry’s hips lose that set rhythm and still. His toes pop and Arya feels like her entire brain has stopped working and come back to life. 

 

_ I can’t lose him. _ She realizes looking into sea-blue eyes.  _ I refuse to lose him again _ . 

  
  


* * *

 

There’s a rhythm to swinging a hammer. A repetition in motion that can keep the body moving longer than it feels like it should. He raises his arms and swings them down. He tunes out what’s happening around him because looking, knowing will change his rhythm. 

 

The battlements are holding for the time being. The wights catch on fire like dry kindling and all it takes is pushing a burning one into another to spark them. He’s stationed further back in the line with a barrel of pitch and fire. His hammer is double-sided with flame and dragonglass. The backswing catches what the first did not. Beric with his flaming sword stands to his far left. 

 

It doesn’t last. 

 

It holds longer than he thought it would, longer than they expected. The dragons flame the flanks of the attack funneling the dead towards the defenses, keeping the fight contained. Still, there is only so much that can be done. His muscles scream. His hands bleed. They fall back. 

 

Things blur for a while. Time loses meaning and Gendry forgets everything but fighting and breathing. He lost the man to his far right at some point. There’s a Mormont guard there instead. He doesn’t remember retreating into the gates. He doesn’t remember what breaks the gate. His back is to it at the time as he deals with wights who have made it over the wall. 

 

It’s a scream that throws him off. Not really a scream. It’s not the same as the screams of the men who have been taken down near him. It’s not the screams of the dead as they lunge towards him. It’s the scream of frustration that only Arya Stark can make. 

 

Gendry freezes. His eyes leave the charging dead in front of him and turn upwards. Arya is alone on her stretch of the battlements and the dead are swarming towards her. She swings with her staff, the one he made her, and it's not enough. There are too many. Arya dodges and then actually leaps onto a connecting roof. 

 

His entire world crumbles in the second that Arya’s feet leave solid stone and leap onto thatched covering. It’s less than a second, a fraction of a moment but it stretches out in his mind like an eternity compressed into a single second. 

 

He loves her. He loves her with everything that he is, with every breath, every heartbeat, and now an army of the dead stands between them. 

 

There’s a sound like a roar. It rips through the area. It shakes his bones. And only after Gendry has slammed his hammer through the dead that stand on the steps up to the battlements and makes it to the top to find that Arya has disappeared into the fight again does he realize he made that sound.

 

_ Ours is the Fury. _

 

Well fuck. He’s a real Baratheon after all. His arms sing with the song of fire, or rage. Gendry brings it down on the head of a wight about to climb over the wall. He barely sees that the shock wave of this knocks the tower of dead to a pile of ash. 

 

“Lad, did you just….?” Davos asks from a spot at the entrance of the battlements. His face is one of shock and memory. He looks as if he has seen a ghost. Gendry doesn’t think this is about the army of the dead. He doesn't care. 

 

“Did she make it off?” Gendry asks as he swings at the wight headed towards Davos.

 

“Aye,” Davos answers, clearly shaking himself from his shock. 

 

_ Good. _ Gendry thought. They better fucking live. He had to tell her. He was going to live through this so he could tell her. Damn the dead and damn the Others. He was a Baratheon in his blood. They had changed a whole continent for a woman before. He could easily change a battle for his. 

 

* * *

 

Sansa closes her eyes and tries to pray with the others. She has gathered as many as she can in a bend in the crypts and is trying to lead her people in something resembling a prayer. Only her mind won’t recite the prayers and she can’t find it within herself to force them.

 

“ _ There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, _ ” echoes in her mind. It’s a chant. A ghost of her father’s words ringing against stone.

 

“ _ Dark secrets live in the crypts _ ,” Old Nan warns at bedtime. “ _ Only the Starks can be buried there. _ ”  A memory of sitting by the fire with Rob and Jon and Theon and Arya as their nurse tells tales of long-gone magics.

 

“ _ Bran the builder made The Wall. He made Winterfell’s crypts first. _ ” Maester Lewin’s words whisper from her lessons long ago.

 

Sansa stands and Gilly looks up at her in confusion. Sansa waves her off. None of them really want to speak, afraid that the dead will hear them. But maybe there is another kind of dead. The kind with iron swords and iron crowns. The kind in the deepest part of the crypts.

 

“There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,” she says to herself. What does she have to lose in trying? Nothing. What does she have to gain? Everything.

 

* * *

 

They are holding back the flood. It’s not perfect and it’s not going exactly in their favor but the walls are not yet completely overrun. The trenches keep the dead from getting to most of the castle. 

 

Arya was at the central point as one of the best shots they have but she had fled that position when it was overtaken. There’s a place for her further back in the line that’s stocked with arrows and more fire. 

 

She turns to run when the fire in the trench in front of the castle goes out. A White Walker stands at the head of a line of the dead with its hand outstretched, and before it the flames die.

 

“Walkers!” Arya shouts the alarm and hears those living take it up as she retreats. It’s up to those few with Valyrian steel to take any walkers on. As Arya leaps over the steps of the battlements she sees Ser Jaime and Lady Brienne charging forward on their mission to take down the Walker. 

  
  


* * *

 

“You will make kings rise and fall.” She had said that to the boy long ago, or more recently than it felt. It was time for her to keep her word. 

 

He did not see her as she approached, too busy fighting the dead. There was a fire in his eyes now that had not been there before, a burning desire for life and all it contained. He would need that. They would all need that fire in the world to come.

 

Melisandre took the blade from her robe and plunged it into the meat of the boy’s shoulder. It was too far to touch his heart or his lungs but it would burn and he would be weak from it. A small price to pay for the outcome. He was young and strong and he would recover, she had seen it in the flames.

 

He turned to her and the shock was apparent on his face. She did not notice the expression, just his face. A face she had seen in the flames. A face she had mistaken for another’s. His hair was close-cropped now when it had been shaggy and long the first time she laid eyes on him. In this light, he looked almost balding and the set of his brow was more stern than it had been. It was her fault and not her fault. The seed was strong. 

 

The boy grabbed at the dagger in his body but she pulled it free before he could. His mouth opened in question. She knew his words. 

 

“Only death can pay for life and the blood of a king is needed for this,” Melisandre speaks the truth but not the whole of it. She does not say that his life is what she is paying for, and so many others. She does not say that this is her choice, a rebellion against prophecy and fate. He will live. This time the wheel will break. Ice and Fire will free this world.  

 

The blade is wet with his King’s blood as she plunges it into her own heart. It sets her ablaze, the last of her god-given power bursting from her in this moment of sacrifice. The fires light anew around them. The dead catching a flame until the whole courtyard burns. 

 

She dies knowing she had saved them. With this gift, Azora Ahai will have the power to strike down the Night King. With her sacrifice, against the wishes of her god, she will grant life. To the boys, she had seen in the flames. To the world.  

 

* * *

 

Davos doesn’t know how he has survived this long. It’s a miracle that he still stands when others have fallen. The courtyard is swarming with the dead but still, the battlements are holding. The dragons are doing their job, keeping the dead funneled to a single point. Less have fallen than he would have thought. 

 

Then he sees it.

 

Melisandre attacks Gendry and he is moving before he even realizes. He will not lose another to her magic. He will not lose this boy. The dagger turns and he is there, pulling Gendry behind him but it doesn’t matter.

 

The red priestess looks at him one last time, plunges the dagger into her own heart and turns into a burning column of flame so bright it shoots into the sky. 

 

“What the fuck was that?” Gendry gasps, gripping his shoulder where the dagger had been, a weak spot in between the plates of his armor. 

 

“I’ve no idea lad,” Davos admits. Melisandre had said she would be dead before dawn but he never in a million years would have assumed that self-sacrifice was the answer.

 

“I’m not fucking dying tonight,” the lad growled and it was shocking how much he sounded like Stannis at that moment. “I have to live long enough to strangle Arya.” This threw Davos, not at all where he thought the conversation was going.

 

“What?”

 

“Well, I can’t bloody well lock her in the crypts for scaring me to the seven hells.” Gendry picked up his hammer with his left arm clearly not wanting to use his right with the injury. 

 

“Is that really the best idea?” Davos was frankly lost here, not that he had been on solid ground before but now he was well and truly in the dark. No pun intended in the actual darkness of the night.

 

“I have no idea. How do you normally tell an assassin that you love them and never want to be apart again?” Gendry leaned against the wall and held his arms out in supplication. “I’ll take suggestions.” 

 

“Carefully?” Davos suggests. Gendry snorts and then adjusts his hold on the hammer. There’s still fighting to be done. If they live through this he will help the lad with any and all great confessions of love. 

 

* * *

 

Sansa had never gone this far into the crypts. She had always stopped at the family she knew and gone no further. She had never seen a point in following the darkness into infinity. Now she finds that it’s a simple thing to walk through the monuments to the past and ignore the old fears. 

 

She finds what she is looking for at the very end. Or perhaps at the start. This must be where the crypts had first been built. In this alcove, there are no tombs. Seven statues stand holding seven blades pointed at the ground. The edges look sharp despite the centuries. 

 

There is a stone with a smooth dip in it that runs off into the dark and somehow she knows what she is supposed to do here. It’s why this place was built. It’s why her family so rarely travels south. It’s why their words are  _ Winter is Coming _ . This place is their last defense.

 

Sansa takes out the blade of dragonglass that Arya gave her and slices her wrist until the blood drips into the dip on the stone. 

 

“I call thee as Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell, to defend us.” The words come to her in memory.

 

The statues move. 

 

* * *

 

At first, the dead are a horrifying sight to behold. Then it’s been an hour and his nose can no longer smell them and his eyes no longer focus on the rotting flesh. And then it's been two hours and he hardly cares what any of them look like only that he cuts them down where they stand. 

 

The dead don’t spew blood the way the living do and Dickon finds that there is an ease to fighting the dead that he never had when fighting the living. He does not need to worry himself with the orphans he could be making as he slashes with a dragonglass sword. Dickon almost believes that he will make it out of this fight unharmed.

 

Then the White Walkers appear.

 

The first one breaks the fire in the trenches with the wave of a hand. The dead pour in around it and they are swarmed, losing sight of the most deadly of their enemies. 

 

Dickon can’t see The Walker but he knows that he must be in the line of fighting and suddenly he realizes he is going to die. He knows he has little to no defense against something like that, power like that. Dickon knows his brother killed one with dragonglass while stranded in the snow north of the wall but Dickon is not his brother.

 

He sees the blue skin out of the corner of his eye, coming for him, and he thinks for the first time that he understands the Stark’s words.  _ Winter is Coming _ . Like the changing of the tides or the seasons, there are things that cannot be stopped. 

 

The ring of swords clashing changes its tune. Higher. Longer. Stronger.

 

Dickon turns to see what has changed, certain he is about to see his death walking towards him. Instead what he finds is a Goddess walking. 

 

Sansa Stark stands tall in the center of a stone circle. No. The circle is made of stone but they are… statues... Monoliths come to life. In the blue moonlight, her red hair and red hands glow brighter than the White Walkers in front of her. 

 

Sansa raises a dripping hand and places it squarely on the back of the statue to her left. It glows red and grey.

 

“Protect those sworn to me.” She commands. The statue moves, choppy and graceless but still, it moves, it’s sword raised high.

 

The White Walker looks different. Dickon realizes why as the statue approaches slowly as if it has all the time in the world to slay its enemies. The Walker is scared. That’s the face of fear. 

 

They fall. 

 

They crumble.

 

In a circle moving outward from Lady Sansa Stark the dead and the Walkers perish in waves.

 

Dickon heaves in great gulps of air in relief and wonder. This is why the North never really converted to The Seven. Who could believe in The Mother, The Warrior, The Smith, The Stranger and the rest when the Old Gods can walk among them. 

 

What kind of prayers does one send to a Goddess with blood on her hands and in her hair? 

  
  


* * *

  
  


_ Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. _

 

She’s so close. She can see the weirwood tree from here but there are just so many of them and she just doesn’t know if she can make it. The space seems great and small all at once. 

 

_ Quick as a snake. Calm as still water. Fear cuts deeper than swords. _

 

Arya isn’t designed for brute strength fighting. She wasn’t trained for it. She was trained for stealth. She was trained for single combat and to fight opponents that are not expecting her. The army of the dead is none of those things. 

 

_ Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. Fear cuts deeper than swords. _

 

The dragons have stopped protecting the flanks and Arya knew she had to get out of her second position. She had let the opinion of others shape her battle strategy but Arya is a knife in the darkness and she knows suddenly where she should be. She has a brother to protect.

 

_ The man who fears losing has already lost. Fear cuts deeper than swords. _

 

Jon is nearby. She can see him slashing a path to the Godswood. He could make it. His sword cuts down the wights in his path.  He can make it. She picks up a dragonglass weapon at her feet and swings low. They are going to make it in time.

 

_ Fear cuts deeper than swords. _

 

There’s an opening.  Arya can see a path among the dead appearing like the path of an arrow. She turns to Jon and he sees it too. There’s a moment when she thinks he won’t go, where he will try to stay and protect her. That’s not how this story ends.

 

“Go!” She screams. His face is a mask of regret and fury but Arya doesn’t care, can’t care. There’s a dragon for her to stop. 

 

This time she will be fast enough, quiet enough, strong enough, clever enough. This time she wins. 

 

_ The lone wolf dies but the pack survives. _

 

* * *

 

Jon thinks he would not be shocked to see White Walkers by now. He has been facing them in some fashion for years. They have haunted his steps since before he can remember. They feel like a burden that has been on his back his whole life. Was there ever a time he wasn’t trying to fight The Others? 

 

Still, he finds his mind struggling to grasp the man, the thing, in front of him even as he swings his sword. Jon cannot keep the fear from his mind and he thinks the Night King sees the truth of his heart. It doesn’t stop him from fighting. Only death, real death, can stop Jon now. 

 

They are the only ones left in this clearing. Bran in his chair and Jon holding back an ancient creature more powerful than he can imagine. It seems wrong that this fight has come to swords. It makes no sense that something like The Night King could be defeated with a blade, even if it is Valyrian steel. 

 

Time seems to slow for Jon as if everything else before this has been happening twice as fast. His life and death a gallop towards this moment. 

 

“Jon!” He doesn’t see The Night King’s hand moving towards his chest until Bran shouts and suddenly everything is happening so quickly his mind can’t track it. 

 

Ghost and Shaddydog appear from the trees with other wolves and leap towards two White Walkers who have come up behind Jon in the fight. 

 

The tip of the King’s finger presses down above Jon’s heart. 

 

His blade cuts into the Night King and the Walkers crumble.

 

The Night King smiles at Jon.

 

The dead fall. 

 

Jon stands in the circle of wolves because now that he can breathe he sees that there is a third Direwolf and a pack of smaller wolves here, wondering if it’s over. It looks like it’s over. He knows it’s over. So why won't his heart release? Why isn’t he relieved?

 

* * *

 

There’s silence, true silence as the dead crumble. An echoing, sucking silence, a vacuum of sound opening up over Winterfell and leaving nothing in its place. Everyone just stands there and pants for a moment, shock and momentum keeping them standing.

 

A wolf howls in the distance. A pack responds and the silence is filled with a sad, discordant song.

 

“Where’s Arya?” Gendry asks no one in particular. Tormund shakes his head wordlessly. The Mormonts near him look equally blank. 

 

“Arya?!” he screams into the coming dawn. 

 

* * *

 

Jon has long enough to breathe a sigh of relief so deep he feels it in his toes before someone is bursting through the trees to his left. Jon makes eye contact with Gendry who looks wild at that moment. Not that Jon must look any better, but there is something cracked in Gendry’s eyes that Jon has no name for.

 

“Arya?” Gendry asks across the shattered ice of the fallen White Walkers. Jon starts to shake his head. He has no idea where is little sis… cousin is right now, and then he remembers what had happened. He had seen her as he ran to the entrance to the Godswood before the dragon appeared. Arya would have had the same instinct he had, to save Bran.

 

“The Dragon,” Jon tells him, hoping he is correct. He hasn’t even had a moment to wonder about who might be lost out there in the wreckage of his home. How many of his friends still breathe? How many funerals will he be forced to endure? 

 

Gendry is moving before the words are fully out of Jon’s mouth, running full tilt at the gate leading out of the wood. He follows Gendry because Jon hasn’t the foggiest idea what else he should do at this exact moment. Jon prays that Arya is alive. He doesn’t pray anymore but Jon finds he wants his family alive more than he has wanted just about anything in this life.

 

“Seven hells,” Gendry breathes. Jon finds that the boy has made it further than him, is jumping over a pile of the dead to reach an empty path. He has to step around Theon. 

 

Jon feels… something seeing the body of a man who had once been his friend and then his enemy. The sword in his chest is made of ice. Theon had fallen protecting Bran from the Walkers. Jon hadn’t noticed when he came this way the first time, too focused on the Night King and his brother… cousin. 

 

Gendry doesn’t even stop, barely slows down until he is near the crumbled bones of the ice dragon. Arya is a ways off panting and looking at her hands. She looks up when they approach. 

 

“Gendry?” Arya sounds surprised and something else is there, a wavering in her voice Jon doesn’t think he’s ever heard before. She’s a blur and then they collide. 

 

“Uof.” One of them grunts and he isn’t sure which one because the grip Gendry has on Arya looks crushing but she has a hand on the back of his neck that appears downright painful. They stand there, twisted in one another, with their foreheads pressed together just breathing the same air.

 

_ It would be better if they were kissing _ , Jon thinks. This is too intimate. Arya’s face is cracked open to something vulnerable and innocent, nevermind the dagger that just defeated a dragon still in her hand. They smile at one another and in the dying firelight, Jon can see tears on their faces. He remembers a smile like that once. He had felt that before. Hadn’t he? 

 

It looked like true love. The kind they write songs about. The kind that saves the world.

 

* * *

 

“You’re bleeding,” Arya says and he can’t tell if she’s upset at him or at the wound.

 

“I’m not the only one.” Gendry brushes his fingers against her temple and she winces. Her hair sticks to her face in places and he thinks he sees burns forming on her arms but right now she is the most beautiful and fantastic thing he has ever seen in his life. 

 

“Forgot about that,” Arya grunts.

 

“Makes sense.” Gendry laughs because he can’t  _ not _ laugh at this. “What’s a head injury in the face of killing an undead dragon single-handedly.” This time Arya laughs. 

 

She doesn’t feel real. This doesn’t feel real. He can feel the echo of an ache in his muscles but it’s fuzzy and muted right now. Gendry is certain he will feel it soon but right now his body feels light and weightless. 

 

There are things he wants to say to her, things he needs to say to her. They sit on the edge of his lips but he can’t find the strength to push them out and her lips are so near that it could be easier to tell her without words all the things he needs to say. 

 

“If the two of you are gonna fuck at least have the decency not to do it all over the dead bodies, or wait until the cripple isn’t fucking watching,” the Hound growls. Gendry turns to see the other man is now standing a ways behind them, along with Jon Snow and Bran Stark. 

 

If Gendry had not just fought the dead in a battle he had been nearly sure he was going to lose, this moment might have made him panic. His heart gave one valiant skipped beat to show it understood he was probably on thin ice here, the world not ending notwithstanding.

 

Arya just sighs and goes slightly limp against him. She rolls her eyes at him when he looks down at her and he can read her perfectly like she has spoken with just her eyes.  _ I shouldn’t have to put up with this, I just KILLED A DRAGON. _ Gendry snorts which makes Arya scrunch up her nose in a smile. 

 

* * *

 

Cleaning up after a battle was a labor almost as intense as the battle itself. There were so many bodies, either that of the dead or fallen scattered about Winterfell. On top of the monstrous workload ahead of them, nearly every person in the castle was injured in some way. 

 

Sansa could see men with missing limbs being dragged into Maester Wolkan’s chambers. Someone had found Lyanna Mormont with nearly crushed ribs and a broken leg. The Lady of Bear Isle was on perilous ground with life as it stood right now. 

 

She looked down at her bloody wrists and figured they were not an issue. Her injuries were self-inflicted and should not be above a man whose eyes had been plucked out by the dead. She had tied a scrap of cloth around each of the long cuts and while they weren’t very tight she wasn’t bleeding any longer. 

 

“My Lady?” Asks a tentative voice. Sansa looks up to see Ser Dickon Tarly standing slightly outside the ring of statues that still circle her. She had forgotten about them momentarily. Looking around Sansa realizes that everyone is giving her a wide berth, mostly likely due to the living rocks she commands. 

 

Sansa pulls at the cloth on her left arm and rubs her palm into the cut until fresh blood appears. She doesn’t actually know what she is doing but so far her commands have only worked with blood added. She walks up to the statue nearest Dickon and places her palm on its shoulder.

 

“Return to your post,” she orders the crypt keepers. They move slowly now in the coming dawn, as if their power only works in the darkness of night. Sansa doesn’t think about that fact that every single bloody palm print has been absorbed into the smooth grey stone of the keepers. 

 

The moment they are out of her sight Sansa feels incredibly light-headed. The world spins. 

 

“Sansa!” Someone shouts and she is embraced in warmth.

 

She blinks up into the open face of Dickon Tarly and thinks for a brief second  _ there are worse places to die _ .

 

She was being silly of course. Her fainting spell was just that: a fainting spell from blood loss. 

 

Dickon finds an intact chair in the great hall and deposits her in it before promising to find her something to eat and drink. Sansa feels woozy. Like her head is filled with feathers. She blinks and Dickon is back. How did he manage to move so quickly? 

 

Sansa drinks the watered wine he offers her and forces the bread into her mouth despite the fact that chewing seems to be a task beyond her at the moment. 

 

“Can I see your wrist?” Dickon asks in that soft tone of his. She raises her left arm without protest. It’s astonishing really how alike Dickon and Sam Tarly are once you get to know them. One would think just by looking at them that they must be completely opposite. Sam always with his books and his wide smile a stark contrast for Dickon in full armor and a sword in hand. Yet their mannerisms are alike. 

 

_ I should not be so quick to judge. Others have surely thought much the same of Arya and I in the past and I would not be parted from her now. We are more alike than even we understand. _ Sansa thinks.

 

“What are you doing?” She wonders, realizing that something warm is running down her arm. Dickon pauses in whatever his task is to show her a flask of scotch.

 

“Your wounds need to be cleaned and Maester Wolkan is busy,” he explains.

 

“Where did you learn to…” Sansa isn’t exactly sure the right word here. Battlefield healing? Wound tending? She needs more bread. “…use alcohol?” Dickon blushes.

 

“I read it in a book.” He sounds proud.

 

“Oh?” She shouldn't sound as shocked as she does but her mind struggles to picture his massive hands wrapped around the delicate binding.

 

“I am not overly fond of books, it’s true,” he admits with a blush. “My brother made a compelling case for the information contained.”

 

His large warm hands handled her like she was something precious and breakable. It should have felt like an insult. Sansa Stark was a child no longer. She had escaped King’s Landing, The Vale, and every man who had ever tried to control her. 

 

Dickon Tarly was different. His attentions felt different. Like reverence. Like worship. 

 

Sansa watches as he ties fresh cloth on her wrists, taking the time to make sure the knots lay prettily against her skin even redoing her right arm until he was satisfied with the product. 

 

“Thank you,” Sansa sighs. Her strength is failing with the rising of the sun. She can see the golden glow through the high windows. 

 

“It is I who should be thanking you,” Dickon insists, still kneeling in front of her. “If not for you I would be dead. You saved me and countless others. This is nothing. I will never be able to repay my debt to you.”

 

His face is open, honest, and incredibly compelling. His words sound like vows.

 

Sansa remembers a dream from long ago. A golden knight in armor to sing her songs and give her flowers. She had become certain that it was a dream. The idle wantings of a child. Yet here in the wreckage of her home was a man who was so good he might as well be out of a children’s story. 

 

A door inside her opened. One she had been working to keep shut. It emitted the tendrils of hope. She could love this man. Maybe not desperately and madly like the tales but she could love him like father and mother loved one another. He would adore her. She could see it in his eyes and all the way down to his soul.

 

“I think I’d like to make you try.” Sansa told him with a smile on her lips and her hand in his. 

 

His face was a dawn after the darkest of nights. 

  
  


* * *

 

“So, about this boy of yours,” Jon begins as he sits down next to Arya. She stares at her brother for a long moment trying to make him leave this conversation where it belongs, unspoken. 

 

“I am not having the feelings talk with you,” Arya explains. “I’ll stab myself first.” She pulls out her dagger and gives it a spin for good measure.

 

“You can either have this conversation with me or with Sansa,” Jon explains. “Although we could maybe convince Daenerys to be a stand-in for Catelyn in a pinch.” Arya can’t tell what her face is doing but whatever it was it made Jon laugh. “That’s what I thought.”

 

“Why does there have to be a conversation at all?” Arya asks the question no one ever seems willing to answer. 

 

“Because you’re important,” Jon tells her. 

 

“Is this punishment for saving us because—” Arya is so ready to complain. You kill one Ice Dragon and suddenly everything is extra serious.

 

“No, silly.” Jon shakes his head like he can’t believe her. “Because you’re my sister. You’re important because of your family.” 

 

“Do I have to?” Arya groans. It always comes back to this, doesn’t it? What’s expected of her.

 

“Do you have to what?” Jon looks amused. “Talk? Eventually yes you do.”

 

“Is someone at least going to have a conversation with Sansa about Dickon Tarly?” Arya feels it is only fair. “And by someone I mean you.”

 

“Dickon?” Jon has very clearly not been paying attention.

 

“Tall guy, blushes every time he makes eye contact with Sansa. Tripped on nothing when she complimented him on his training of some of the Winter Town small folk. Stammers more than talks. Brother to your best friend.” Arya elaborates if only to see the look of confused shock on Jon’s face.

 

“What is it with Tarly men?” He mutters under his breath.

 

“I don’t think we can make Bran have The Talk with Sansa about him,” Arya continues having gained footing here. “Rickon certainly can’t do it. He hasn’t even had his Talk.”

 

“Nice try.” Jon pokes her in the side. “I know your tricks. No distracting me with new topics.” 

 

Damn. 

 

“What do you want me to say?” Arya is at a loss here. She is not built for talking about decisions like this ahead of time. Sure she can plan a battle or think up the precise way to bring down one of the most powerful men in Westeros, but this isn’t something she considers ahead of time.

 

No, that’s not true. She had planned an attack, hadn’t she? Set it up so she could get the outcome she wanted. She wanted Gendry so she seduced him. That proved that she could think about something like this.

 

“I don’t  _ want _ you to say anything,” Jon corrects her. “I just want to know what you want.” Jon places his hand on Arya’s shoulder and forces her to look him in the eyes. “I will not make you do anything you do not want to do, ever. You have to believe me.”

 

Jon has such honest eyes. They aren't the same color as Father’s but in this moment she can only remember his face. Their hair is pulled back the same way and Arya cannot control the burning in her eyes. Her cheeks are wet without her consent and Jon wraps his arms around her until she is tucked into the crook of his neck. 

 

“It’s alright,” he breathes into her hair which just makes her clutch him harder.

 

“I don't want to leave,” Arya sobs. The truth of it shaking her. She truly does not want to leave Winterfell ever again. It’s her home. Her family is here. She is sick of partings and endings and losing the things that belong to her. If she picks one she will be stripped of the other and the thought of it makes her sick. 

 

“You don’t have to,” Jon assures her but he doesn’t understand. He may be a bastard and he had been sent away like she was but his sex did not demand he lose a vital part of himself for love or loyalty. 

 

Arya wanted to always be a Stark. It was her bones. It was the name that kept her sane in the long days at The House of Black and White. Stark was the wolf dreams and the Godswood and the smell of snow. If she loved anyone it would be stripped of her and she would lose the thing that had saved her all these lonely years. 

 

She wasn’t sure that anyone could be worth that. 

 

* * *

 

“No.”

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe I heard you.” Daenerys is used to hearing the word no. She has heard it so many times that it has lost its sting. But she very rarely hears it when she is giving out gifts. No is normally reserved for when plans are being made or when she is trying to break corrupt systems that have been in place for thousands of years. She has yet to hear No in response to the offer of land, titles, and legitimacy. 

 

“With respect Your Grace, I must decline,” Gendry says voice shaking. Dany finds herself surprised by this boy.

 

“May I ask why?” She had to work to keep a smile from her face.

 

“These great houses always have cousins and second sons and their distant relatives,” Gendry’s tone was exasperated. “These people have grown up in these castles as their homes, as their family’s homes.” He cleared his throat. “I would not take their home from them.”

 

Daenerys wondered what it was about bastard boys that gave them this soul. She had heard that Jon had made much the same argument to leave the children of traitors in their family castles. It was rare to find one man who would put others first but to stumble across two felt,  _ more than coincidental _ . 

 

“Homes are important,” Dany agreed. Gendry nodded. “Especially if you have been trying to get back to your home for many years.” She added and watched as the dawn of understanding rose on his face.

 

“Your Grace,” Gendry’s wide eyes answered any lingering doubts.

 

“Do you not want to be a Baratheon because it would mean being a Lord or because it would mean leaving Winterfell?” Now Dany found that she could not keep the smile from her lips but she endeavored to have it remain small so as not to frighten the boy. 

 

“I don’t think I would make a good lord. I don’t have the slightest idea what being a lord requires besides the fact that they seem to change sides and start wars and that’s not for me. Nearly every highborn I have known has been trouble and I don't think I want to be a part of that. Besides, Ar—” He coughed and Dany had to try harder not to laugh, “Winterfell needs repairs and I think I like the north.” 

 

“Men who do not seek power are extremely rare.” Dany decided that poking at him over his obvious adoration of Arya Stark was not the route to take at the moment. “Perhaps when you are not occupied with repairs to Winterfell you might find time to speak to me about the failings you have seen in the Highborns of Westeros.”

 

“Your Grace?” He was back to a panicked kind of excitement.

 

“If I am to rule this country I should know what it needs. A Lord can tell me what a Lord thinks it needs. You can tell me what a Blacksmith thinks it needs. I need both, and many others, to have a full understanding.”

 

“I would be honored,” Gendry said with a very low bow, clearly needing to be done with this conversation. She would have to be careful in the future to make sure he was not so frightened of her.

 

“It is you, Ser Gendry, who would do me the honor. The people must come first if we are to live in a better world.”

 

* * *

 

“The Queen just tried to legitimize me!” Gendry blurts out so suddenly that Arya trips as she is walking across her room and has to look up at him from the floor.

 

“Did she?” Arya has liked Daenyrs but clearly, she needs to be dealt with if she is sending Gendry halfway across Westeros.

 

“I turned her down,” Gendry babbles. “I said no. To the Queen. Who has dragons.”

 

If someone had asked Arya yesterday if Gendry wanted to be legitimized she would have said yes. She knows he has always wanted a family, a place to belong. She knows that he suffered similarly terrible treatment as a child that Jon endured. She knows he wants to prove himself.

 

She has no earthly idea why he would say no to the queen.

 

“I thought you wanted a family?” Arya wonders. 

 

“I do!” He snaps. “But being a Lord doesn’t mean you get a family. It means you get bannermen and the people you have to feed and I would be a stranger in the Storm Lands. No one would trust me and I would be all alone, I don't want to be alone.” The last part he practically whispers as he collapses onto a chair by the fire. 

 

They haven’t talked. Not really. The battle has only been over two days and no one is even celebrating yet because the pile of bodies that need removing from the castle and the surrounding grounds is astronomical. So they didn’t really discuss the specifics after the battle when she had dragged him to her room. And they still weren't really discussing the fact that days later they continued to share her room. 

 

“But you wouldn’t be alone.” Arya doesn't know why she is pressing this. She should let it be. If Gendry is Lord of Storm's’ End then he will have to live in Storms’ End and she doesn't really want to leave Winterfell any time soon, or ever again. 

 

“You wouldn’t come with me so it’s the same thing.” Gendry looks at her with firelight eyes then and she remembers a night in a cave a long time ago.

 

_ I could be your family. _

 

“If you were a lord you could marry anyone you want.” Arya feels like she is blind again, feeling her way along a wall in the darkness. She is nearly certain she knows where the wall will lead her but she wants to be sure. 

 

“No, I’d have to marry a Lady.” Gendry licks his lips and shifts his eyes away from her. “And I heard that you were no lady.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Arya stands at the end of the wall and sees it, the thing that she wants. It looks like the two of them together in the great hall while children run around by the fire. It looks like Gendry telling her all about metal and why weapons take so much time to make. It looks like home.

 

“How do you feel about the name Stark?” Arya asks stepping closer. Gendry’s face wrinkles in confusion.

 

“Why?” His voice is soft and uncertain but his eyes are open and she can see he will follow her down this path all she has to do is show him the way.

 

“I thought you might like to take it.” 

 

He pulls her down to a kiss that tastes like sunlight. 


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What comes after the battle is won. Can one person really save the world?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is me showing self-restraint. I wanted to show so many things and I could tell that my muse was not in the mood for it and forcing her to write something she isn’t feeling is a fool’s errand.
> 
> This is my attempt to solve all the problems. This is my attempt to give The World of Game of Thrones an ending it deserves. It is vague in some places and clear in others.

Raven Messages from The Dragon’s Winter in the Winterfell Archives transcribed on Belor 10th 1323 A.D for the Winterfell Preservation Museum Foundation.

 

60.

_ By Royal decree of Queen Daenerys Targaryen from this day forth until the ending of all days inheritance of land, titles, and other worldly possession shall be given to children in order of their birth regardless of sex. _

 

A note scribbled in a different hand at the bottom of the parchment

_ Reply from Dornish Princess attached. _

Document could not be located.

  
  


137.

_ By Royal decree of Queen Daenerys Targaryen from this day forth until the ending of all days a husband may take his wife’s house and name. May the Northern Families be strengthened and never weakened again.  _

  
  


208.

_ By order of Aegon Targaryen rightful King of Westeros does the Golden Company lay siege to King’s Landing. _

 

A note written in a different hand at the bottom of the parchment.

_ Blackfyre? _

 

300.

Missive from King’s Landing

_ They are saying he strangled Queen Cersei with his bare hands. _

  
  


425.

_ Bend the knee big sister or face the consequences. _

 

Clarification in Maester Walkon’s hand

_ There was an old Targaryen tradition of calling any member of the main royal family sister or brother.  _

 

580.

_ Queen Daenerys Targaryen has wed King of the North Jon Snow. In accordance with their first proclamation as Queen and King of the Seven Kingdoms Jon does take the name Targaryen and devote himself to his queen.   _

 

583.

Scrap of paper possibly torn from a journal found at the bottom of a shelf, written in Sam Tarly’s hand. There are scorch marks near the top. The page had likely been mostly burned. 

_ I have found no cure in the books. The Maesters at the Citadel cannot find anything either. Bran seeks the counsel of the Children but makes no promises. I have begged him to go North or South to seek more knowledge but he won’t leave her now that she is pregnant. She says it's a miracle that she had been cursed. He is cold to the touch these days.  _

_ I’m afraid. For him. For her. For all of us.  _

  
  


669.

Found attached to a raven message about a distant Baratheon nephew swearing allegiance to Queen Daenerys. The hand is shaky and does not match any of the documented writings previously found.

_ A is for  _ _ Apple _ _ Arya _

_ B is for  _ _ Bastard Baratheon _ _ Bran _

_ C is for [ink splotches] Catlyn _

_ D is for  _ _ unDead _ _ Dragon _

_ E is for Essos _

_F is for_ _Fuck_ _Fire_ _Family_

_ G is for Godswood _

_ H is for House Stark _

_ I is for fucking Ice and Snow _

_ J is for Jon _

_K is for_ _Killing_ _Kings Landing_ _Knight_

_ L is for Love _

_ M is for [ink splotches] Marriage _

_ N is for Not Today _

_ O is for Old Gods _

_ P is for  _

_ Q is for WORDS START WITH THIS LETTER? _

_ R is for Ring _

_ S is for Stark _

_ T is for Together _

_ U is for unbelievable _

_ V is for Valiryan Steel _

_ Will you marry me so I can take your name and we can be a family?  _

 

Written in another hand sideways across the paper.

_ Idiot. The Wedding is tomorrow.  _

 

670.

_ Arya of House Stark has wed the knight Ser Gendry and he has joined the great and noble House Stark. _

 

710.

_ Today Queen Daenerys and King Consort Jon welcome their daughter Jonerys Droganna Targaryen First of her name and Princess of The Seven Kingdoms.  _

  
  


835.

_ The Citadel welcomes Queen Daenerys Targaryen. May this be the start of something beneficial to the land. _

 

839.

_ Lord Dickon Tarly has wed Lady Sansa Stark on this day. They shall join their houses in name. Long live Lord and Lady Stark-Tarly. _

 

900.

_ We have checked the records. There is nothing for a disease as you describe. Bring him to us and we might have a better answer. _

  
  
  


3000.

_ You have to forgive Bran eventually. He is grieving his brother too. He could no more have saved Jon than I could have saved father. -Sansa Stark-Tarly _

  
  


-

 

**Excerpts from Grand Maester Sam Tarly’s _History of Westeros and The World_. Originally mocked for being an emotionally charged tale of the rise of Queen Jonerys and her efforts to modernize Westeros it survives as the only detailed telling of the fates of Queen Daenerys and King Jon. **

 

_ … There is very little record of what happened to the second moon in historical texts. The best kept documents only say that it cracked in the sky and that following its shattering dragons were brought into the world. There was no citadel in those days. These are oral histories recorded centuries later. We cannot trust their accuracy. _

 

_ However, we do know that there is record of a time when the seasons were regular and occurred in a single year. The evidence exists in trees and rocks and the lines of sediment in rivers. See Maester Sagan’s text on The Knowable History of the World as Defined by Geological Study… _

  
  
  


_ … The impact of Queen Danerys and King Jon is hard to measure. They started the first ruling body outside of the monarchy, consisting of a representative of all the great houses, the top twenty minor houses in each kingdom, and the guild leaders in the major cities. This alone could have changed the Westeros and the world. They began the process of allowing women to pursue professions normally blocked to them by tradition, and their daughter Queen Jonerys saw the happy completion of this dream. _

 

_ Yet none of the things they did as rulers could ever hold a candle to the sacrifice they made for the betterment of the realm.  _

 

_ Others have written of the creation of the second moon, known in Westeros as Drogon, in a detached manner. To many the actions of the Queen and King were something noble and worthy of songs. _

 

_ The truth is more tragic.  _

 

_ While the Battle of Winterfell was won for the living it was the beginning of the end for my dear friend Jon. He was touched by the King of the White Walkers in the final skirmish. There were no signs at first, the disease laying hidden beneath his skin for the first long months of The Dragon Winter. His symptoms first presented when it was revealed that the Queen was pregnant, something she had believed would be impossible… _

 

_...Ice did not improve his condition. Fire did not improve his condition. He worsened, slowly in the coming months and years. He refused to give in to the corruption. The best healing maesters in Westeros attended him to find a cure. _

 

_ The final solution came from Brandon Stark. He was reluctant to give it. In fact he refused to for many years, claiming that he would not tell me or his brother until every other avenue had been attempted. He wept when the blue skin crept to Jon’s face. _

 

_ “I tried to stop this.” He sobbed as he told us the solution.  _

 

_ The disease was magic. Magic would need to be the solution. The magic of men and gods would not do for this, older, primal magic was the cure. Or rather, the lack of magic. _

 

_ The children of the forest did not fly he reminded us. The Others walked the earth as well. In truth magic was not done in the sky but on the ground.  _

 

_ Jon needed to be removed from the earth and taken to a height that the magic growing in him could not stand. It required a dragon and a rider to carry him. There was a very real chance the rider would die before Jon could get high enough. Brandon claimed that the dragon would likely die in the pursuit. _

 

_ The Queen would not let anyone else go. She claimed it was her right and her responsibility to save Jon. Drogon claimed the right of being her mount as Princess Jonerys was deeply enamored with Rheagal and it with her.  _

 

_ None of us understood what would happen, even Brandon Stark claimed to only seeing that it would “cure the poison” in Jon. We expected them to die. They expected to die. Daenerys and Jon appointed regents for their daughter. The sovereign states of Westeros were altered to the fact that they had abdicated their thrones. It was all prepared as a funeral for the living.  _

 

_ Arya Stark had to be restrained by her husband and Brienne Lannister as Jon and Daenerys climbed Drogon in the Dragon Pit. Missandei of Naath wailed so long and so loud that  dogs in King’s Landing fled. I will admit to tears myself. It was a moment that shook each of us to our core, or would have had what followed not been so astonishing. _

 

_ They rose ever higher a black spec in the sky. The poets sing that their love was so great that they expelled their powers into the sky. I cannot say what happened up there in the skies; I can only recount what occurred on the ground. _

 

_ We saw a flash of flame and blue. It colored the sky for miles and the wind is said to have blown all the way to Essos. The earth shuddered under our feet and the whole world trembled. Even my brother Lord Stark-Tarly known for his steadfast footing was cowering on the ground as the ground split open across Westeros. _

 

_ When the ground settled and the sky was no longer a flame and white-blue like The Wall in sunlight I saw the result. In the sky where there had been one moon there now sat two. The second was darker with patterns like black dragon wings curling in to protect the orb. _

 

_ In the farthest parts of Essos where it was night they were able to observe with telescopes that the new moon had an impression of and embrace along its patterns of rock… _

  
  


_ … Queen Daenerys claimed she was born to free the world from tyrants. She thought that meant overthrowing rulers like Queen Cersei or The Mummer’s Dragon King.  _

 

_ In truth, she freed us from a greater tyrant, starvation. The seasons have been regular from the moment the second moon appeared in the sky. We have a summer, spring, autumn, and winter every year. The people no longer starve by the thousands for years on end.  _

 

_ Daenerys and Jon saved more than Westeros. They saved the world, until the end of time. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did not pull a “Twilight” with that naming choice.
> 
> I pulled a “my parents fucking did it to ME so I will pass the pain on to my readers.”
> 
> I’m not joking.
> 
> My father’s name is Al. My mother is Denise. My name is Alyse. Fucking think about that. I am furious about it at least 3 times every six months.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions or confusion on plot points in this fic after reading please dont [ hesitate to ask!](https://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/)


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